Professor Olusola Adeyeye, who represents Osun Central Senatorial District in the National Assembly, was the Vice Chairman, Senate Committee on Education, in the Seventh Senate. In this interview, he speaks with Assistant Editor (South West), MUYIWA OLALEYE, on the shortcomings of the seventh Senate and what Nigerians expect from President Muhammadu Buhari, among other issues.
Many Nigerians seem to see President Muhammadu Buhari as someone whose administration can better their lot. Do you see him sustaining the confidence?
Yes, of course. Buhari is a person that I have been following his activities since he ruled Nigeria (as military head of state between 1984 and 1985). The confidence I have in Buhari cannot be quantified. I also have confidence in Nigerians in general. They are fantastic followers. If the leaders provide bad examples, Nigerians follow; if they provide good leadership, we follow. When (former President) Olusegun Obasanjo, in his first coming as a military head of state along with the late General Murtala Muhammed, gave us operation low profile, we followed. The head of state, governors, permanent secretaries, directors and civil servants all rode in official cars of Peugeot 504 that were less in cost. During the administration of President Shehu Shagari, we unfortunately had a situation where we not only got back to Mercedes Benz cars, we went back to the elongated Mercedes Benz called the Shagari Type. At the end of the day, ministers, permanent secretaries and everybody followed. What you have in Nigeria today is that everybody wants to ride a private jet, Land Cruiser. One day, I got to the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport and counted the number of planes that were on the commercial side; I also counted the number on the private side. We had at that point 14 planes on the commercial side and 23 on the private wing.
If you have worked hard for your money and chose to buy the moon with your money, it is your right. But most Nigerians suspect that most of those planes were bought with stolen money. Fortunately, we now have a president who I’m convinced will either scrap the presidential fleet or keep them drastically reduced, or may even refuse to travel first class when he flies abroad as we saw recently. Once we get that template from the top of the leadership, trust me, every minister, permanent secretary and senator will follow suit, and before you know it, low profile will become a standard practice without a law being made to effect it.
When the same Buhari and (Tunde) Idiagbon came with their War Against Indiscipline (WAI) at that time, I believed that what they were calling discipline was military regimentation. Perhaps because of the thinking of that era – the thinking that we needed a military-styled dictatorship to effect rapid societal changes – one could from hindsight not blame them as much as we did. I was glad that Tunde Thompson (jailed The Guardian reporter during Buhari’s days as military head of state) came out to say he has forgiven Buhari. Thompson was after my own generation at Ibadan, but he is a man that I respect very much and that is what we must all do. We must all forgive ourselves for past lapses. I am confident that things will be different this time around.
How would you assess the immediate past Senate in which you belonged?
To be sincere with you, I have not been impressed at all with the process of passing budget. A situation, where each senator is given a maximum of five minutes to make comment on a document that is over 3,000 pages would not allow you speak to the depth and the variation of the problems. Second, I had not been happy with how we had, from year to year, failed to hold the feet of the department of government (that is, the various ministries) to the fire of accountability. We passed budget from year to year, almost as if it was an act of gimmickry, rascality or frivolity because when you pass a budget and only about 20 per cent of essential capital development are eventually executed and that 20 per cent ultimately get abandoned, you have a recipe for endless paralysis, stagnation, indeed for retrogression. So, I don’t think we had done well at all in the area of oversight and in the area of ensuring that the most important bill in any legislature, the Appropriation Bill, was thoroughly implemented. Quite frankly, a situation where even the bill is brought so late and everything is rushed tells you that we were all totally unserious about that business.
The second aspect for which I was most disappointed was the manner in which we confirmed appointments of nominees of the former president. Let me tell you, some of the brightest minds in the world are Nigerians. If we are serious people in any sphere of human endeavour, we can find capable hands who can run Nigeria. Some are brilliant but dishonest; some are honest but due to no fault of theirs, they do not have the necessary requisite qualifications and experience to build a nation. If we diligently look for them, we will find enough Nigerians with the integrity, the skills and with whatever it will take to build Nigeria. The qualities of our nominees sometimes had not been impressive, and the process of confirming them, sometimes, had shown more loyalty to party interest than to national interest.
On the basis of these observations, what would you advise the incoming Senate?
The incoming senators should be good leaders and patriotic. They should institute a leadership that puts the affairs of Nigerians above the affairs of party. I pray to God Almighty for that. As long as I’m in that Senate, I will put the interest of Nigeria above that of the All Progressives Congress (APC). I also pray God to give me the courage to advocate such among my colleagues. I also pray that if it ever comes to a point when we reduce that chamber to defending and promoting the interest of party over that of the republic that God will give me the courage and humility and sense of responsibility to resign and go back to the classroom. I pray to God.
Second, I pray God to allow us see that the problems we have in Nigeria are everywhere. Most Nigerian politicians commit in the way they talk. We always talk as if the other parts of the country are doing better than our own parts. As someone from the South West, for example, I will talk as if the Igbo, Hausa, Fulani and the South South are all living in heaven, while the Yoruba are living in fragments of hell. But it is not so. Every part has its own problems.
There is nowhere you go and find decent infrastructure for education. There is nowhere you go and find decent infrastructure for health, security, and so on. Just look at the police in many of our local government areas; they are so decrepit that you wonder what is happening to them. The point is that things are bad almost everywhere. Our approach is not to focus on our own part of the country alone; I pray that the leadership of the eighth National Assembly will be a leadership that will not put the entire project in their own senatorial zones.
